Activating iPhone overseas

Should work as long as your US-based account information remains the same. However, be advised that it will need to be an iPhone purchased in the US, as the ones slated for European release will be tied to different SIM cards. It will not be enough to simply buy a European iPhone and plop in an AT&T SIM card.

Do you have a US iPhone? You won't be able to buy a european iPhone and activate it with ATT - the phones sold in UK can only be activated on 02, the ones in Germany on T-Mobile, the ones in France on Orange...none of those phones can be activated on ATT.

If you have a US iPhone, and you have a US laptop with US iTunes then you should be able to activate it no matter where you are. It will connect to the US activation system. If you have a european computer with european iTunes you will not be able to do so. You will need to wait until you get back to the US or find a fellow american that has their laptops with them with american iTunes. ITunes in europe connects to the local european iTunes system that it reads in the ISP address when you connect. If it recognizes you have a european computer, it will connect to that european iTunes. They are mutually exclusive of one another. Americans can't access european iTunes stores, and europeans can't access US iTunes.

I am sure someone will confirm if they could connect from Europe to activate -- but I am relatively sure that you can only connect with a US computer with US iTunes installed on it.

Correctimundo

I don't know this for sure, but I believe that the final step of activation occurs via AT&T (over the air) so no, this will not work.

I have heard of others that had ATT accounts, went overseas and upgraded firmwares and were stuck until they returned to the US within AT&T's reach to get the phone reactivated.

Also, during the activation process, iTunes clearly states: "Waiting for AT&T to activate iPhone." As it did this, I was under the impression that it was happenning out of band (OTA) and not the internet connection via iTunes.

Your best bet is to contact either Apple or AT&T directly and make sure this is going to work for you. Like I said before, I'm not fully certain of this, just posting it as encouragement to call ATT or Apple so that you are not disappointed.

Here's more evidence of this...

iTunes 7.5 was released today... in the notes is states:

"iTunes 7.5 features the ability to activate iPhone wherever service is offered..."

iPhone isn't offered overseas so I seriously doubt it will work.

netslacker2000 wrote:
"iTunes 7.5 features the ability to activate iPhone wherever service is offered..."

I think they mean now it will work for UK iPhones and wherever next released

Yeah I believe they came up with this iTunes update now so that everyone will get a chance to get it before the release so that they dont have to download it and wait to activate the night of..and maybe prepare the US for 1.1.2

But again, the important thing here is that iTunes is different in the US and other countries - it is programed to locate only that country's approved iTunes website - which are independent of each other - and activating is independent of each other. With a european ISP being picked up by iTunes, it is programmed to automatically put you into the appropriate countries iTunes site -- i.e. you can't activate a US iPhone overseas.